Political Rift Inside Kenya On the Mend At a Meeting

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: February 24, 2010

After a week of playing political hard-to-get that put this country on edge and caused Kenya's stock market and currency to slide, Kenya's feuding president and prime minister finally met Tuesday.

The two sat down and talked for more than an hour in President Mwai Kibaki's office in downtown Nairobi, the capital, according to Kenyan lawmakers. ''It was a good meeting,'' said Jakoyo Midiwo, a political ally of the prime minister, Raila Odinga. ''They agreed to address the issues that divide us.''

Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki had been locked in a bruising political impasse for more than a week, after Mr. Kibaki revoked Mr. Odinga's suspensions of the ministers of agriculture and education on suspicion of corruption.

The acrimony between them is hardly new. Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga have been rivals for years, and it was a disputed election between them in 2007 that caused Kenya to crack open in ethnic violence that killed more than 1,000 people. After that, under intense international pressure, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga joined together in a so-called grand coalition government. But the coalition has been roundly denounced as dysfunctional, corrupt and a ''grand letdown.''

If there is a single issue that continuously holds Kenya back, that retards its economy, discredits its judiciary, poisons its politics, and impoverishes its people, it is corruption. Independent audits have been delving into reports of graft, and the day before Mr. Odinga suspended the two ministers, Mr. Kibaki suspended several high-ranking civil servants. But Mr. Odinga said more action was needed, and moved against the Agricultural and Education Ministries, both of which have been hit by staggering corruption scandals.

In the Agricultural Ministry, the audits found that officials cut sweetheart deals in which grain from Kenya's emergency reserves was sold at subsidized prices to political cronies at a time of looming famine. The result was that the cronies made enormous, under-the-table profits, the national grain reserves dwindled, food prices spiked and people in the hinterland starved.

At the Education Ministry, the accusations involved the disappearance of millions of books and chunks of donor money.

On Feb. 14, Mr. Odinga abruptly announced the suspensions of the ministers and said that he was referring their cases to prosecutors. Hours later, Mr. Kibaki derided those moves, saying Mr. Odinga had no such power. For much of the past week, Kenya's two top officials appeared to studiously avoid each other.

Many Kenyans have asked why Mr. Kibaki reflexively reinstated the ministers whose departments had become incubators of graft. One interpretation is that he wanted to humiliate Mr. Odinga and show that, despite the facade of a coalition government, the president still held all the power. Political analysts say that Mr. Kibaki also wanted to cozy up to the large ethnic voting bloc behind the agricultural minister, William Ruto.

Likewise, many people here suspect Mr. Odinga of being motivated not so much by genuine anguish over corruption but by more selfish political calculations. He may have announced the suspensions, the conventional wisdom goes, to cut the charming, ambitious Mr. Ruto off at the knees. Mr. Ruto used to be a political ally but seems ready to challenge Mr. Odinga to become the opposition's candidate in the next presidential election in 2012.